"Theory is not enough. There must be stones." (LeGuin)

My hovercraft head is full of eels quotes about semiotics ("The relational nature of signs produce a potentially infinite process of signification"), about literary criticism ("Literary Criticism must recognize that literature is not a simple aggregate of discrete works but a conceptual space which can be coherently organized."), and by Ursula LeGuin ("All the was's turn into were's, and leap out at the reader snarling."). I find myself comparing science fiction to Schroedinger's Cat in that both are thought experiments, and looking for the signs of science fiction and what they signify in a given context. I'm re-reading the theory of the novel and of narrative. I wonder if I'm going to have to read Derrida, Saussure and Frye in order to write this PhD, or whether that would go too far. I'm wondering why Moby Dick is a white whale, and what the event and experience horizon of the average reader of science fiction is. My thought processes are akin to spirals, which curve outward and in like a labyrinth, occasionally begetting little spiralettes until I am lost in a jungle without a machete. Sometimes, I am distracted by colourful colibris of ideas flitting through the undergrowth, and encounter wild theories that need taming. And sometimes, I feel like my head is about to explode. I only hope that when it does, my thesis will become apparent in the remains.

It feels somehow fitting that today, for the first time, I was quoted in the LJDQ.